A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys

Page: 59

His nap had probably lasted a good while, when the cup chanced to
graze against a rock, and, in consequence, immediately resounded and
reverberated through its golden or brazen substance, a hundred times
as loudly as ever you heard a church-bell. The noise awoke Hercules,
who instantly started up and gazed around him, wondering whereabouts
he was. He was not long in discovering that the cup had floated across
a great part of the sea, and was approaching the shore of what seemed
to be an island. And, on that island, what do you think he saw?

No; you will never guess it, not if you were to try fifty thousand
times! It positively appears to me that this was the most marvelous
spectacle that had ever been seen by Hercules, in the whole course of
his wonderful travels and adventures. It was a greater marvel than the
hydra with nine heads, which kept growing twice as fast as they were
cut off; greater than the six-legged man-monster; greater than Antæus;
greater than anything that was ever beheld by anybody, before or since
the days of Hercules, or than anything that remains to be beheld, by
travelers in all time to come. It was a giant!

But such an intolerably big giant! A giant as tall as a mountain; so
vast a giant, that the clouds rested about his midst, like a girdle,
and hung like a hoary beard from his chin, and flitted before his huge
eyes, so that he could neither see Hercules nor the golden cup in
which he was voyaging. And, most wonderful of all, the giant held up
his great hands and appeared to support the sky,-127- which, so far as
Hercules could discern through the clouds, was resting upon his head!
This does really seem almost too much to believe.

Meanwhile, the bright cup continued to float onward, and finally
touched the strand. Just then a breeze wafted away the clouds from
before the giant's visage, and Hercules beheld it, with all its
enormous features; eyes each of them as big as yonder lake, a nose a
mile long, and a mouth of the same width. It was a countenance
terrible from its enormity of size, but disconsolate and weary, even
as you may see the faces of many people, nowadays, who are compelled
to sustain burdens above their strength. What the sky was to the
giant, such are the cares of earth to those who let themselves be
weighed down by them. And whenever men undertake what is beyond the
just measure of their abilities, they encounter precisely such a doom
as had befallen this poor giant.

Poor fellow! He had evidently stood there a long while. An ancient
forest had been growing and decaying around his feet; and oak-trees,
of six or seven centuries old, had sprung from the acorn, and forced
themselves between his toes.

The giant now looked down from the far height of his great eyes, and,
perceiving Hercules, roared out, in a voice that resembled thunder,
proceeding out of the cloud that had just flitted away from his face.